Alexander McQueen's Actual Skin Was Used to Create Leather Jackets

A Central Saint Martins student is taking fashion to the next level. Quartz reports that designer Tina Gorjanc of the materials futures program is designing leather jackets and bags using the school's most famous alumni's DNA, Alexander McQueen. Yes, you read that correctly. Gorjanc got permission to use DNA found in the late designer's hair, which was part of his designs in the 1992 "Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims" collection to grow skin in a lab that she will then use for handbags and jackets. The design student's "Pure Human" project is also meant to "show how corporations might one day exploit genetic information for luxury goods, and to showcase how little protection exists for a person's DNA," according to the article.

The young designer is hoping to display the finished products—complete with freckles, tattoos, and moles found on the skin it came from—in an exhibition rather than produce them for sale. It's definitely out there, but McQueen himself was known for pushing the envelope, so he would probably be into this sort of experimenting. As Gorjanc says, "He was always pushing the boundaries and always trying to break laws in fashion."